Chapter 35 Ch 35

"Your Highness, Miss Anna, I don't know if I can drop you here," the driver said.

I gulped. "It's okay. We'll be alright. It's my family and they don't know what we are."

The man looked nervous but drove up to the gated driveway. Matt squeezed my hand.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"Maybe I should go first? Then tell them I have you with me?"

"Whatever you think is best. I would feel better facing them with you, but you know how they'll handle this better than me."

I leaned up to peck his lips. My parents had never given me a lot of reason to worry about them. They'd mostly had a lax parenting technique with me. I never worried about necessities growing up, but I hadn't spent much free time with them. When I chose to leave the bitter North for my position in Savannah, they were happy for me.

"I'll signal you somehow," I told him. A haunting thought crossed my mind. "If I don't, stay here."

"Are you afraid they'd hurt me?" he asked, a pleased smile on his delectable lips.

"A little." I shrugged with a blush. "Just, please. For my peace of mind."

"As you wish," Matt said.

"Good. Thank you."

"Unless, of course, we have any reason to believe you are unsafe. Then I will haul Basileus out of his cave."

I arched my brow. "Tempting idea."

"Don't," he warned with a playful yet fierce look.

My heart ached. I would do anything to see Basileus again, to assure him that I wasn't going anywhere. I might not have been millennia-old and I might not be invincible, but I damn well could survive a lot. Leaning over, I kissed my human on the lips.

"I'll motion for you," I whispered.

I left the car before he could keep stalling me. Just as the door closed, I heard a whimper. I shook my head. This was my family. My sole purpose was to make sure they had survived and see how they were. I had tried to mentally prepare myself for every possibility.

As I approached the gate, I leaned onto my toes to touch one of the skulls. The smooth, sun-baked surface sent a chill down my spine. I didn't have much time to reflect on the feeling. My ears heard the front door squeak open. There was a gasp. Within seconds, I could smell my mother's shampoo. I lifted my head.

"Honey!" cried my mother from the porch. "She's home! Our baby is—Anna's home!"

She rushed down the steps towards me. I smiled a little to hide the nausea. She'd aged a decade since I'd seen her last. It felt like a lifetime. Her curly brown hair was now almost entirely gray and tied on top of her head in a bun. The colorful, mismatching shirt and pants she wore hung off her figure. She'd lost the rounded exterior I had always known growing up. Her cheekbones and chin jutted out.

The moment the gate was thrown open, the skulls rattling on their perches, her wiry arms strung around me. She cried into my hair.

"Oh, my sweet girl," she cooed. "My sweet, sweet, wild girl."

I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax. Something wasn't right. My instincts refused to let me believe this was hunky-dory. Then my nose twitched. I smelled my dad's deodorant and something else. Peeling my eyes open, I patted her back and looked towards the porch.

"Well, now, get her in here," he huffed. He pushed his round-rimmed glasses up his nose and snorted. The gesture was so familiar I almost cried.

"Mom," I greeted her, pecking her cheek. "Let's go inside for a minute?"

"Sure, honey. Sure." She glanced at the black tinted windows of the SUV. "Got anybody else in there to join us?"

I shrugged. "You know, I've been dying for some of your lemonade."

She chortled. "Say no more."

We walked into the yard and she made sure to close the gate and lock it behind us. The lock was fingerprint-encoded. My throat felt tight. She guided me up to the door and into the house.

Nothing had changed. Not really. The printed furniture was all the same, in exactly the same place. An old, small television sat on a table in the living room, playing the news like always. I paused to listen to the headlines but my mother ushered me into the kitchen.

Here, some things had changed. Metal slats now barred the window over the sink. The back door was locked with the same mechanism as the gate and the small window on it also had bars. There was a shotgun mounted over almost every door frame. My parents had never owned a gun in their lives.

"Come, sit."

She pulled out a stool at the breakfast nook and I sat on it, watching her move around the kitchen. Despite the extra softness her body no longer possessed, she moved with the same grace as before. Floating, essentially.

"What's with the armory?" I asked.

I felt awkward. It was a stupid question, but there wasn't much else I knew how to ask right. This felt like a weird dimension. Almost like when I had been in the interminable place. My father's shoes clapped into the kitchen while my mother paused from where she stood at the fridge. She looked at him and then at me.

"Everyone needs to be protecting themselves these days," she remarked. "Haven't you learned that, honey?"

"From wolves?"

My father pulled out a stool beside me and sat. He looked me right in the eyes. "Where has my little girl been all this time? Fantasy land?"

I pulled back the slightest. My stomach was roiling. "The wolves I know aren't . . . they're dangerous, but they can control it. What happened here?"

"Control it." My father laughed. "Sure they can. The one who broke into this house and tried to eat your mother was just a rabid one, I'm sure. Except that it happened to almost every neighbor and friend we have."

"Eat you?" I asked her.

She wouldn't look at me but fixed her gaze on the barred window over the sink. "It did more than that. Tried to do more than that."

My brows pinched together. I felt confused and furious. No one messed with my mother or my family. I glanced at the mounted guns. They weren't crazy. They were scared.

"The wolf skulls?" I pressed, looking between each parent.

"After they got in here and did that to your mother, I went out with a few buddies and hunted some down. The ones out lurking, prowling the streets like they owned 'em. That's how we got law and order back in this town. Then that monster king of theirs issued some order. They stopped messing with people so much." He shook his thinning head of gray. "You've been hanging with some of them?"

I swallowed. This was my chance. Either tell them the truth or hide it all. I was beginning to understand them, though. If I had been here when my mother was attacked, if I didn't know and trust so many wolves, I would hate and fear them too. I had hated and feared them. Though the sentiment felt long expired now, I remembered. I knew how they felt. I had been in hiding and watched so many die.

"Mom and Dad . . ." I tucked my hair behind my ears and took a deep breath.

She pushed a glass of lemonade in my direction, her eyes flashed with apprehension.

"I don't just hang out with some of them. I am one of them."